Case Number 25982: Small Claims Court

MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: VOLUME XXVII

The Charge

"Help me..."

The Case

Big fog, big bombs, big bugs, and big teenagers await in Shout! Factory's
latest Mystery Science Theater 3000 foursome. Volume XXVII is
another eclectic set, following in the licensing deals of the past couple
collections to deliver more Universal monster (The Deadly Mantis) and
Bert I. Gordon (Village of the Giants) badness, along with a first season
stand-out (The Slime People), and a depressing slice of Cold War atomic
paranoia (Rocket Attack U.S.A.).

First season episode The Slime People might not be the lowest-budget
film in MST history, but it feels that way. In this near-future creature
feature, nuclear explosions around L.A. have driven to the surface a race of
subterranean monsters with crude spears and lumpy exteriors ("Nice rock
garden! Ooh, it's his back."). The title beasties' big topside move is to
somehow create a fog that hardens into a dome that encloses all of Los Angeles,
trapping a pilot, a scientist dad and his two attractive daughters, and a
marine. The group bands together to fight the monsters, destroy the dome, and
reclaim Los Angeles for the overprivileged and morally corrupt. At least, I
think that's what happens. The fog obscures the majority of the movie, and seems
to be thickest during the action scenes. It's a clever way to hide the bad
effects and worse acting. Prior to the fog lifting at the end I was sort of
impressed by the Slime People suits. In the cold light of day, however, as Tom
Servo puts it they're "about as scary as Teddy Ruxpin."

The Slime People is preceded by part six of the Commando Cody
serial. I wish I could remember what happens in it. I think some people drive
cars. Elsewhere in this episode, Tom hates that Crow is a "morning
'bot"; the Mads invent cotton candy that screams when you eat it; and the
robots come up with an idea for a movie about a guy trapped on a desert island
who's forced to watch bad TV shows, but Joel doesn't think it will work.

The Slime People is a fine entry from the first season -- shorthand
for saying it's lighter on jokes than other seasons. Of all the things Shout!
Factor has done with these Mystery Science Theater sets, one of the best
is their insistence on including Season One episodes. These entries may not be
as polished as later seasons, but they can't be beat as pure expressions of the
show's DIY charm.

The disc's main bonus feature is a seven-minute interview with Slime
People actress Judith (Morton) Fraser. She describes her experience in
landing this first film role, and how her excitement at being cast alongside her
friend Susan Hart turned into embarrassed laughter at the premiere. Fraser is
engaging and self-aware, dishing about Robert Hutton's non-existent direction
and the whoppers co-star Wiliam Boyce told to impress the younger actresses.
Also included, the theatrical trailer, which oversells the film as "a wild
bloodbath" of "lust." It's neither.

Season Two's Rocket Attack U.S.A. is an unconventional spy film, in
that the spies who appear to be the heroes -- two Americans undercover in Russia
with orders to sabotage nuclear missiles -- fail miserably in their mission,
dying shortly before a Soviet A-bomb blows the living hell out of New York City.
The film ends on a burning city with the note "We cannot let this be -- THE
END" ("Oh yes we can!"). The movie is preceded by Part 2 of
The Phantom Creeps, starring Bela Lugosi, exploding spiders, and a giant
robot. Don't get too excited. Lugosi is invisible for most of the short
("Now that I'm invisible I'll secretly switch their coffee with Folgers
crystals") and the robot doesn't do anything cool.

If you're looking for cool robots, check out Tom Servo, who sports a new
head-do courtesy of Joel and a sander, making him look "like the guy from
House Party" (kids, ask your parents what that means). The episode
also features Dr. F and Frank's water polo foosball table; a hilarious history
lesson about the Cold War and the "Charlie McCarthy hearings"; the
Civil Defense Quiz Bowl; and a flyby visit from Russian cosmonaut Sari
Andropoli, played by Michael Nelson, and his junk-grade robot companions Lucia
and Vitalic. (A bit of MST3K trivia: according to Paul Chapin in The
Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, Rocket Attack U.S.A. marked the first
appearance of the show's signature post-credits "stinger.")

Rocket Attack U.S.A. suffers under the weight of a painful movie and
dull short, but Joel and the bots riff away as best they can. There are some
great one-liners ("It must be a stealth missile. There's no shadow."),
but the best things in the episode happen outside the theater. The Charlie
McCarthy hearings sketch packs a lot into a few hilarious minutes, taking a
simple Cold War pun and spinning it into a sprawling blacklist parody featuring
every famous puppet from the '50s and '60s.

The disc's lone bonus feature is "Life After MST3K: Trace
Beaulieu." Although it clocks in at only seven minutes, Beaulieu's
interview fits nicely with the J. Elvis Weinstein entry a few sets back. Trace
reconnected with Weinstein post-MST3K because he needed help recording a
voiceover audition for a movie role that may surprise you. The pair worked
together on a series of high-profile TV shows, including Freaks and Geeks
and America's Funniest Videos (the funny episodes, I'd imagine). I could
listen to Beaulieu talk for a lot longer than we get here, but his hilarious
exit almost justifies the shorter segment.

We shift to the Mike Nelson and Season Five with Village of the
Giants, Bert I. Gordon's follow-up to The Magic Sword. Giants
is a hokey bit of teen exploitation that tries to class things up by claiming to
be "based on an H.G. Wells novel," but it's just an excuse to show
scantily clad youngsters shaking their bits to '60s hits. The movie's notable
cast includes Tommy Kirk, Beau Bridges, and Ron Howard as "Genius" --
a whiz kid whose chemical tinkering produces a pink substance that causes
anything or anyone who eats it to grow. After Kirk and his girlfriend fail to
capitalize on a plan to sell the goo to, I dunno, someone ("Tommy Kirk
talking about goo makes me very uncomfortable"), Bridges and his gang of
transient teen hoodlums steal it, eat it, get huge ("D'oh! I didn't grow
proportionately!"), and take over the town. Their short-lived reign is
punctuated by a lengthy sequence in which the giant teenagers, dressed in not
very much, dance in slow motion with Gordon's camera capturing every jiggly
moment. This is a movie in which a character ends up with a face full of
abnormally large cleavage...twice. This episode's non-movie excitement is Dr.
Forrester firing Frank and replacing him with Torgo. It's all temporary and
Frank never even moves out of Deep 13, but it allows for some memorable host
segments, culminating in the excellent original song "Let Me Be Frank About
Frank."

Village of the Giants comes with the theatrical trailer and an
interview with Joy Harmon, who played Beau Bridges' girlfriend in the movie.
It's almost tragic to hear her talk with such joy about how long she wanted to
be an actress before Groucho Marx hired her to be on You Bet Your Life,
and how much fun she had making Village of the Giants except for the
scene where the teens grow out of their clothes and her shirt pops open -- a
scene she "[doesn't] know if anyone remembers," as if it wasn't the
scene that everyone remembers. Harmon seems too sweet for the role she
was asked to play in Gordon's tribute to voyeurism. Nice to hear she later
turned a love of baking into a successful craft services business. In a
Hollywood world of show-offs and phonies, Harmon seems like the real deal.
Thanks to Shout! for sharing her story.

Volume XXVII's final episode is The Deadly Mantis from the
show's first season on the Sci-Fi Channel. One of a gajillion giant monster
movies, Mantis follows in the stock footage footsteps of flicks like
The Mole People -- also produced by William Alland, who had at this point
in his career fully embraced filmmaking on the cheap. It explains why so much of
the movie is devoted to footage of radar towers, air bases, and illustrated maps
explaining the U.S. early warning defense system -- leaving precious little time
for the giant prehistoric bug ("People think I'm fat but I'm really just
big exoskeletoned") to wreak havoc on stock footage of an Inuit tribe.
Standing in the creature's ravenous way are the military ("Prepare to
deploy giant facial tissue to destroy the enemy"), an insect scientist, a
plucky female journalist, and the dashing air force colonel she falls in love
with immediately and for no apparent reason. This episode marks the end of the
show's Sci-Fi story arc on ape earth, as Bobo and Peanut fix their neighbor's
"Holy and Everlasting Bomb" and accidentally blow up the planet. The
blast kicks off a space chase between Pearl's rocket RV and the Satellite of
Love, inspiring a series of road trip gags.

Deadly Mantis is the best episode in the set. It also has the most
bonus features, beginning with an introduction by Mary Jo Pehl. She has a lot of
insights about the movie, and its place in cinematic history. The Deadly
Mantis gives her a platform to talk about the things she loves about black
and white movies of the era, and to compare the relative scariness of early
monster effects to those in later movies like Alien. This disc also
includes the theatrical trailer, and Volume XXVII's only Ballyhoo
documentary. The 12-minute "Chasing Rosebud: The William Alland Story"
is a companion piece to the extras created for Revenge of the Creature
and The Mole People. Although there's some overlap with those previous
featurettes, there's enough new material to justify a third doc. As a major
player in B-movie history, Alland deserves a closer examination, as a creative
force and a cautionary tale. Before Alland was padding pictures with cheap stock
footage he was a member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre and even had a small
role in Citizen Kane. It's a fascinating story. My compliments, again, to
Shout! Factory and Ballyhoo for producing these movie history featurettes. They
have become highlights of these Mystery Science Theater 3000 sets. The
lone piece they included here is great, and I hope the next collection has even
more.

Previous Mystery Science Theater box sets may have spoiled me when it
comes to the quantity of bonus features, but there's no denying the quality of
Volume XXVII. The episodes are all terrific for different reasons; the
full frame, stereo presentation is consistently solid; and the extras are
informative, with a respect not only for the TV series but the people who made
the original movies. I love this show and I salute Shout! Factory for continuing
to curate the definitive MST3K home video collection.